Heinz R Putz of Fanuc CN

My own machining background goes back to an apprenticeship in Germany, I started for the German railroad at 15 years of age, in Northern Germany in a Locomotive Repair Works. We had 20-25 apprentices each year and everything was first learned by hand, we had an open fire blacksmith shop, a lot of files, big and small hammers and really tough supervisors, not averse to physical punishment. We have a family history of metal work, my Grandfather was a Blacksmith Master in Prussia, according to family history he was the official Blacksmith master in the Emperors Guard regiment. He was quite tall, everyone in the Emperors Guard had to be 2 Meters tall (6.6 feet), I guess it made the Emperor feel taller.

Unfortunately, I inherited none of the metal skills from my Grandfather and until I got into CNC I never really liked my job at all. After immigrating to the US and after working in many, many shops around the US, I took a class in Chicago at a local Community College, it was called NC Engineering. I learned nothing I ever used, but it opened the door to a great job opportunity with SMT(Swedish Machine Tool), a manufacturer of the first real, at least in my opinion; CNC lathe.

SMT had a really good training system, we had a class for our customers in Chicago prior to the machine delivery, followed by 3 days of in-house training, actually programming and producing the customers first parts. We had to rightfully assume that the customers needed to learn everything from speeds and feeds for CNC and CNC math to figure out the part shape. They of course also needed to learn programming and proper record keeping, tool selection and tool setup.

We were quite successful in selling our CNC lathes, unfortunately we were way too expensive compared to the early Japanese lathes, such as Mori-Seiki with the Fanuc controls. Often, our price was double that of our Japanese competitors and eventually our sales slowly disappeared.

By this time, I had trained many shops all over the US and Canada and I also knew most of the Japanese importers and the people at Fanuc quite well. I was offered a consulting job to re-write manuals and teach for Fanuc in Chicago and between teaching for Fanuc, importers of CNC, many dealers and many shops, I have been busy in trying to teach the efficient use of CNC lathes and mills ever since.

In my CNC DVDs, I try to pass on the knowledge I gained over all these years on to anyone that needs it, and that’s pretty much every shop that uses CNC. To be totally self sufficient with CNC lathes or mills, you need to be able to take a print, know what the material is, sit down and write a program, figure speeds and feeds, do the necessary math, go out to the machine, set the tool, enter the program, double check it, then carefully make the first part. By the time you run your 3. part or so, you should have decrease the cycle time by fine tuning, especially your speeds and feeds.

CAD-Cam packages are great for molds with many, many motions, but for real production, write the program yourself and take all the shortcuts you can. keep in mind that the person that created the software used for programming was most likely not a very good machinist and all packages have to make programs that fit many situations. If I made a program for a very low lot run of 1 or 2 parts, it would look totally different from a program that has a lot run of 1000s.A major concern is that there are very few people left in our industry that actually know how to produce anything without the help of some software. The classical and logical sequence of learning CNC was to be an operator, learn programming and setup, then learn to generate a program with the use of one of the many software packages. Now everything is automated, straight from some computer language to CNC software, with no machining experience in between. All of my in-house training and also the content of the DVDs, is very detailed, below is a sample from my website.

Example: G76 in 2 line format for OT and later controls.
2″ diameter, 20 Threads per Inch, Mild Steel.

O2006*
N1 G50 S1500*
N2 T0101*
N3 G97 S700 M3*(Speed for threading, always in RPM)
N4 G0 X2.2 Z.2 M8*(Rapid to above part, .2″ from face)
N5 G76 P021060 Q20 R5*(The first 2 digits in P represent the amount of finish passes, the next 2 are the pullout distance at the end of the threading motion, expressed in tenths of revolutions, the 60 is the angle of the tool)
N6 G76 X1.94 Z-1.0 P300(total thread depth) Q150(depth of first cut) F.05*
R if needed is the amount of taper over total distance in thread motion.
The P value is figured by taking the F-value times the constant of .6, once figured you also have the X value.
N7 G0 X6.0 Z6.0 M9*
N8 M30*

the website has many detailed examples, with speeds, feeds, explanations, etc.

The website is currently #1 in Google under “Fanuc CNC’, I believe mostly because of the detailed content.

Hello Bob:
Boy, its been a long, long time. I hope you are still doing well and selling a lot.
Paul K. is doing good in Columbus, we still do some CNC things together.
Look at my website: http://www.doccnc.com , I have all my skills on DVD.
Good luck: Heinz.

Hello Joan:
The schools vary a great deal across the country, drop me a note where you are and I will tell you what I know.
To start learning CNC, look at the examples on my website.http://www.doccnc.com
Also look at the available DVDs, a lot of schools use my DVDs as their class materials.
Good luck: Heinz.